The Portland Trail Blazers lost their final preseason game on Friday evening, falling 128-118 while visiting the Golden State Warriors. After the Blazers led by many as eight early in the first quarter, Golden State found their legs and honed their collective shooting eye to comfortably outdistance Portland’s rotation players. The end of the Blazers’ bench cut the lead to as few as seven in garbage time, but the attempt at a comeback was snuffed out by the Warriors’ deep bench without too much difficulty.
Damian Lillard led all scorers with 23 points in just under 26 minutes of court time, going 13-13 from the free throw line in the process. Donovan Clingan pulled down 11 boards.
Here are a few observations from the game.
Scoot: A Tale of Two Halves
After starting the previous game, Scoot Henderson came off the bench in this one, and boy did he have a miserable first half. He led the team in first half three-point attempts with four, but missed them all. He also led the team in fouls in the first half with four of those. Full credit to Henderson for responding well in the second half. He tallied 17 points after having earned exactly zero in the first, doing most of his damage from lane penetration. His points came against the Warrior’s bench, but that just goes to show that Head Coach Micah Nori has some interesting options for how he divides minutes. Unfortunately Henderson never did find the range from deep though, finishing 1-8 from beyond the arc.
Defending Woes
One shouldn’t read too much into preseason games. Let’s keep reminding ourselves of that, shall we? Still, we can only draw conclusions from what we can observe, and what we observed tonight wasn’t pretty. The Blazers made the Warriors look like they had turned back the clock six or seven years. Golden State converted 40.9% of their three-point attempts, way too many uncontested. When the Blazers did force the issue beyond the arc, a Warriors cutter was often found in acres of space for an easy layup.
It wasn’t all miserable, the Blazers had some outstanding defensive trips down the court, where every challenge was crisp and each switch was well timed and executed. In those well-executed moments you could see something this team has been lacking in previous seasons, some real ability to close down shooters and not get beaten like a bunch of pylons. Unfortunately, those good moments were simply outweighed by the bad. We’ll have to wait to see if good defense is something they can build on, or if fundamental structural problems with defensive personnel is going to become the story of the season.
Three-Point Shooting: I Have Good News and Bad News
Let’s start with the good news. The Blazers generated a ton of open three-point looks. Unlike what we’ve seen in some of the earlier preseason play, there weren’t an excessive number of blind heaves. The bad news: they still didn’t convert as many as you’d like to see. 35% from deep isn’t miserable, it’s just that the number of open looks should have been rewarded with more makes. The path is still wide open for a three-point specialist to become a valuable part of the rotation. (Side Note: Vit Krejci inexplicable doesn’t seem to be able to grasp the opportunity with both hands.)
Points of Emphasis
The NBA has announced three points of emphasis this season: off-arm push offs by offensive players, restricting defender’s freedom of movement on screen, and defenders restricting the freedom of movement of off-ball players on offense. We got to see some prime examples of what refs are looking for in this game, especially off-arm push offs. Ja Morant especially is going to have to modify his game if referees stay dedicated to these points of emphasis.
Boxscore
Up Next
The Blazers will open the regular season against the Phoenix Suns at home on Wednesday, October 21 at 7:00 PM Pacific. This one counts! See you there!
